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Phenomenology is the study of the phenomena we experience. Taking a step back from the way we normally perceive the world, the filters and abstractions that make it possible to live in it, phenomenologists try to perceive the information their senses provide as directly as possible. This makes it a very subjective study with findings that are hard to generalize, and that’s part of the point. How boring wouldn’t it be to live based solely on generalizable undisputed facts? ...

My thoughts after reading half of the Malazan Book of the Fallen series

A poem about abstraction

It was the second spring of the year, or perhaps third. I can’t remember. Where I live the transition from winter to spring doesn’t go smoothly, it is a tug of war and spring has to try multiple times in order to succeed. (sidenote: This was not the last spring of the year. In a feint to tug at our collective hearts, the spring decided to yield to winter one last time. ...

How much trash do we produce every day? How and where do we notice trash? When do we find trash disgusting? How could we become more conscious? And, finally: What is trash at all? The Unconcious The Disruption The Synthesis

A poem about traffic lights

A poem about ice

Nassim Taleb often says crazy things (like saying that mathematics is bad because economists misuse it), but sometimes he says something useful. One such thing is the Antilibrary: the collection of books in your library that you haven’t read. He values these books more than the read books because they are a reminder of how much you don’t know, a form of intellectual humility before the copious amount of knowledge in the world (Taleb 2008). ...

Sometimes there are papers that are interesting, have a simple core argument, but are nevertheless hard to approach (perhaps because of added nuance or rigour requirements). “Democratic Theory and Border Coercion: No Right to Unilaterally Control Your Own Borders” by Arash Abizadeh is one such paper that I will attempt to distill down to it’s core below. For more details, elaborations and the impacts on the self-determination argument I refer you to the full paper. ...

I think there is something special about The Malazan Book of the Fallen’s magic. It’s honestly hard to put it into words, but I think it is something to do with how inseparable the magic is both from the world and from the text itself. The magic doesn’t feel like a system, it isn’t just the physical effects that affect the world. No, the whole world is magical and can’t be neatly separated into a ‘system’ and a ‘place’, nor can the magic be disconnected from the prose itself. ...

Hur har synen på teknik förändrats över tid? Det är förstås en väldigt bred fråga som jag inte har plats, tid, eller kunskapen att besvara. Istället har jag valt att rikta in mig på två idéer som som jag observerat bli uttrycka: elektrifiering som lösning på bilars (alla) klimatproblem, och effektivisering som medel för att minska utsläpp. Vad finns det för historisk bakgrund för dessa idéer? Vilket syfte har effektivisering haft genom historien och vilka konsekvenser har teknokratisering? ...

A spoilerfree exploration of a hidden villain in the volleyball manga Haikyuu.

In order to improve my sleep schedule I’ve picked up the habit of reading a bit before going to bed. It becomes a ritual that helps me ease into sleep. This however, places some constraints on the book as getting excited is counterproductive to the goal of relaxation. The book can’t get too boring either as the goal is to be able to read a book, and boring books are no fun to read. ...

This is a translation of my other post: En berättelse om berättande I don’t think I’ve had a reading experience like the one I had with Lev Tolstoy’s War and Peace before. (sidenote: The version I have isn’t the one that is most widely known. Tolstoy apparently completely rewrote the book and it is that version that was published in 1867. It wasn’t until 2000 that the original version would be published in Russian as an ordinary novel. ...

A translation of this post exists here: A story about story telling Jag tror inte jag har haft en läsupplevelse som liknat den jag haft med Leo Tolstojs Krig och Fred förrut. (sidenote: Den versionen jag har är annorlunda från versionen som är mest känd. Tydligen skrev Tolstoj om romanen och det är den som sen blev publicerad i 1867. Det var inte förrän år 2000 som den ursprungliga versionen blev publicerad som en vanlig roman på ryska. ...

Invisible Cities The first time I stumbled upon the book Invisible Cities, when it was used in the video essay “Searching for Disco Elysium”, I didn’t really take notice of it. [1] [1], [2] The book played a secondary role, it was used to highlight an aspect of the titular game Disco Elysium, so it was perhaps unsurprising that it didn’t strike me as something remarkable. However, that changed when I read the essay “Two Concepts of Legibility”. ...

In this tutorial I will go through the ideas that underpin constraint programming, a technique for solving hard algorithmic problems. It is a pretty advanced technique and is an active research area, but despite this the core ideas are actually surprisingly easy to understand. After reading this tutorial hopefully you’ll understand the principles of how a constraint programming solver works. I want this tutorial to be understandable to as many as possible, regardless of how much programming background you have. ...

Note to people reading this from browsers with limited css-capabilities: This contains spoilers for Dune that are hidden using css, consider reading it in a web browser. I’ve been reading Dune and it’s shaping out to be one of my favourite books, but one thing in particular stood out to me: the characters are boring. How can a story be this good with boring characters? For me the answer is that the focus and enjoyment lies elsewhere: partly in the political intrigue between different factions, but mostly in the exposition. ...

One reason that I wanted to read Speaker for the Dead again was because I heard people say that the author was a massive racist, which is interesting because the same people would say that his racism conflicts heavily with the themes of the book. (sidenote: If you want to read this book, I encourage you to do so in a way that doesn’t support him financially, such as borrowing it from a library, a friend or from the seven seas. ...

Unseen Academicals, a book in the Discworld series by GNU Terry Pratchett, is about the wizards of Unseen University playing football, which the front of the cover helpfully suggests. The back of the cover on the other hand informs us that ‘The thing about football — the important thing about football — is that it is not just about football’. And sure enough, while Unseen Academicals is about football, it’s not just about football. ...

❗ Warning: This contains spoilers for the some character developments and the general structure of the Golden Age Arc of Berserk. Berserk is an extremely well crafted manga which I highly recommend. I think it would be best to read that first, although I think it is very enjoyable (maybe even more enjoyable) on second reading so I don’t think these spoilers would hurt the experience too much. In her video on Tragedies, Red from Overly Sarcastic Productions defines and describes the formula of the ancient Greek Tragedies. ...

❗ Warning: This contains spoilers for the some character developments and the general structure of the Golden Age Arc of Berserk. Berserk is an extremely well crafted manga which I highly recommend. I think it would be best to read that first, although I think it is very enjoyable (maybe even more enjoyable) on second reading so I don’t think these spoilers would hurt the experience too much. In her video on Tragedies, Red from Overly Sarcastic Productions defines and describes the formula of the ancient Greek Tragedies. ...

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro is perfect for you if you are an science fiction reader looking to branch out into more conventional stories. It is still a sci-fi, but not the kind that builds a story around a question such as “How can a great galactical empire collapse?” or “How would/should humanity react to the invention of intelligent robots?”. Ishiguro doesn’t rely on exposition to explain the world or what is special about it. ...

I have used org-mode for a few years now, primarily for task management, document writing and note taking. It has been very good for keeping track of what I need to do in my studies and volunteer work, but despite this I’m moving away from it for my task management. I find it very hard to think actively, as opposed to reactively, when I’m at a computer. For example writing a new text is harder to do on a computer than with pen and paper, but editing a piece of text works fine. ...

I discovered in high school that I like to write, which came as a surprise because I had always disliked writing assignments. With this newfound knowledge I tried to explore writing as a hobby. The only way I had written anything before was for larger projects, writing assignments, and that was what I tried. My first project was about the movie Spirited away. I had noticed that some side characters, the big baby and the faceless monster, went through their own story arcs parallel to Chihro’s. ...